Magic: The Gathering Drive to Work Podcast - Drive to Work #393 - Top 10: Evergreen Creature Keywords

Episode Date: December 16, 2016

Mark picks his Top 10 favorite evergreen creature keywords.

I'm pulling out of the parking lot. We all know what that means. It's time for another drive to work. I dropped off my Dodd Rider internship. Okay. So, today is a top ten episode. Previously, I did a top ten episode of my favorite non-Evergreen keywords. So, it seems only apropos to do one of my top ten Evergreen keywords. Although, I actually restricted it to evergreen creature keywords. I'm not going to try to figure out where scry falls in the list. So anyway, I'm looking at the evergreen creature keywords and picking my top 10. So I think there's 15 evergreen creature keywords.

So two-thirds of them get to make the list. So as always, when I say my top ten, this is my feelings today. Maybe ask me a different day. I'd have a slightly different list. But here's my list today. So there's a lot of factors I'm looking at here. I'm looking at sort of flavor of the mechanic. I'm looking at gameplay of the mechanic.

I'm looking at design space. I mean, it's everything all together. Like, just as a designer that designs magic all the time, which are my favorite evergreen keywords? Okay, we'll start with number 10. Indestructible. So I first made this mechanic during Darksteel. We were trying to figure out something cool to do to like what could you do with artifacts that's like what what is the biggest problem with artifacts and i said people destroy

them what if we couldn't destroy them and so originally indestructible wasn't even a keyword it just was like an english word um but everybody thought it was a keyword so we eventually made it into a keyword um so the reason indestructible is 10 is it's splashy, it's fun, it's flavorful. You know, the idea of, you know, magical things and this thing is just, it can't be destroyed. That is pretty cool. I mean, for those that don't know it, I'm a big comic book nerd and, you know, I grew up with like Superman and, you know, the idea of being indestructible is kind of cool. So the reason this one comes in at number 10, I mean, the reason it makes the list at all is it's exciting. You know, it is definitely something we do that people sit up and, you know, it is pretty awesome sounding.

The reason it's at number 10 rather than being lower down on list, is it is a little bit confusing for people. Like, one of the problems is when we first introduced Indestructible, my joke was, when I would do social media, was can Blink destroy it? No! Blink can't

destroy it. It's Indestructible. And somehow the idea of, I mean, one of the things is trying to understand what in the game destroys things versus not destroy things can be a little confusing. There's some state-based effects that just, you know, that...

There's definitely some things that work around. One of the things about indestructible, for example, is minus N minus N effects will destroy indestructible. And the idea that that works against indestructible, but like, you know, other things can't. Or like how it interacts with sacrifice. I mean, there's things that definitely can be a little confusing about it.

So it is splashy. It's fun. It definitely is a mechanic that people really seem to like. But the reason it only comes in at number 10 is it is not always clear what it means. And there's been a lot of... We have to be careful in sets that have... I mean, I guess it's evergreen. But we have to be careful when and how we use indestructible.

Sometimes we get cutesy with it. Like I know, like Scars and Mirrodin, we had minus one, minus one counters. like Scars and Mirrodin we had minus one minus one counters which actually Indestructible does not stop death by minus one minus one counters and so we were a little more liberal with our use of Indestructible

I mean one of the things we thought was funny was the idea that the Mirrans made use of because they were the ones that we introduced Indestructible in Mirrodin so we're like oh hey this is one of the tools of the Mirrodin, Darksteel which was the Indestructible in Mirrodin. So we're like, oh, hey, this is one of the tools of the Mirrodin. Dark Steel, which was the Indestructible thing. Oh, they're kings of the Dark Steel.

Like, too bad that if I're fighting an enemy that uses minus one, minus one counter. So, you know, I thought that was kind of cute. But we got cutesy there. So anyway, at number 10, Indestructible. Number nine, Trample. I'm sure a lot of people think I would have trample slightly higher. So trample to me is a lot like indestructible in that it's flavorful. It can be a bit splashy.

I don't think it's as splashy as—I don't think the splash is indestructible, but I think it's probably a little more flavorful than indestructible. I mean, the idea that I have a giant creature and you try to stop it, but, oh, it's so big it just tramples over your creature. That is really cool. That is why it's number nine, is just the flavor of it. It does a neat thing for green. Big creatures in general, but green is the one that makes the best use of it.

Trample does this cool thing where it says, okay, one of the things that we're always looking at is how evasion works. And trample is a neat way to do evasion that is just a very different animal from most evasions. You know, most evasions, like, either you can be blocked or you can't be blocked. But trample's like, well, you can partially block me. You can absorb some of the damage. So there's neat gameplay in trample. And so I, uh, if everybody in the world could understand trample, it would be high on the list. The reason it's number nine is,

oh boy, it is probably, either it or indestructible is the most complicated mechanic we have right now. Probably trample is more complicated than indestructible. Because at least indestructible is just what does and doesn't destroy it, you have to learn. And most things in the answer, it stops most destruction effects.

There's only like minus and minus. There's only a limited number of effects that it doesn't destroy it, you have to learn. And most things in the Amstrad, it stops most destruction effects. There's only like minus and minus. There's only a limited number of effects that it doesn't stop. Where Trample, Trample's one of those mechanics that like every time we make cars with Trample, we have to be very careful about how to do that and how to use it. It's interesting. We don't put Death Touch and Trample together

just because that's a little bit too confusing how it works. So it is a fun and flavorful mechanic. It plays well. But the reason it's number nine is I think a lot of players don't really understand exactly... I think most people... Well, okay, there's three groups. There's the people who just get it,

who understand how Trample works. There's the people who understand get it, who understand how trample works. There's the people who understand how it works in most cases, like you know, in the vanilla cases of like I have a 2-2 and I block your 5-5 trample. There's a lot of people who understand that situation. But I think there's a lot of people that start interacting

mechanics and start having things interconnect. Like, do not know how Death Touch interacts with trample. By the way, for those who don't know, Death Touch needs to do only one point of damage to destroy it. So if I have a creature, let's say I have a 4-4 Death Touch Trample creature,

if you block me with one creature, I can assign one point to your creature to kill it with the Death Touch, and all the rest get to Trample over. It's not always super clear. But anyway, trample is fun, but trample is... Trample is one of those things that I wish

was a little better understood, but, I mean, it's been there since Alpha, and time and time again, it just proves whenever we sort of teach beginners and monitor how people receive the rules, trample's always been a problem child. I guess now that I think about it, it's clearly the most complicated evergreen mechanic.

But anyway, it is... It's one of those things that it's hard for us because it is so flavorful, and the gameplay is really good, and it does something very unique that other evasion mechanics don't do. Obviously, it's still in the game.

You know, it's lasted for 23 years. So, you know, there's something about it that's worth sort of the complication. But it is something that has proven to be more problematic than most keywords. Okay, so at number nine, trample. At number eight, Death Touch. So Death Touch is interesting. So, like, Indestructible started in Darksteel.

Trample started in Alpha, obviously, which made Trample. So, Death Touch, so, obviously, the earliest form of Death Touch happened in alpha. There was Thicket, Basilisk and Cockatrice.

Although one of the things we found, so when I was trying to create keywords, so Death Touch came about during FutureSight when I decided that we didn't have enough key, we didn't have enough evergreen keywords that we needed a little bit more to allow us to do what we need to do with the colors, that we were a little shy. And so what I both did is I spread things a little further. I took keywords that appeared in one color and found a secondary color for them. And I introduced some keywords of things. We did enough that I felt we needed a keyword.

And Death Touch was one of those. One of the reasons I introduced Death Touch was if you went back and looked at all the cards that essentially had Death Touch, they all worked differently. Like Thicket Basilisk was if it dealt damage to a non-wall... No, no, no. If it dealt damage or if it was blocked, I think. Like some of them were dealt damage by, some of them were blocked, some

of them were attacked. Like they're just different triggers that cared about when it happened. And we finally said, okay, let's figure out and the cleanest way we thought was just damage. That's the flavorful thing. Did it damage you? Well, if it damaged you, then, you know, it's got a poisonous touch or something. There's a couple different flavors for Death Touch.

But the idea is something about the creature inherently, you don't want to get in a fight with it. You will not survive a fight with a Death Touch creature. Death Touch is kind of neat. It is an interesting answer to larger creatures. It's something we can put on smaller creatures that can help sort of address. And the neat thing about it is if I put out a Death Touch creature and you have a big creature, it kind of makes it to taunt for a little while. You don't want to attack. But later in the game, if you can find a way to remove my Death Touch creature, you know, I like answers with answers. And the idea is Death Touch sort of like creates this threat that kind of stops you, but if you eventually get the answer

to my Death Touch, then maybe you can attack again. Or sometimes you get enough creatures that you can wave me, and even though I'll Death Touch one of them, you'll be able to do enough. And so, like, I like that Death Touch is a clean answer, but it's an answer that sort of has interesting gameplay ramifications. So why is it number eight? Why is it not higher up? The thing it gets dinged for

is there's not a lot of design space, per se. We can't make a lot of Death Touch creatures... Well, first off, Death Touch is really only interesting on a smaller creature. We occasionally put Death Touch on big creatures, but it's solely a flavor thing. And not particularly... Not really...

Like, an 8-8 with Death Touch is like, well, it's probably going to kill anything that blocks it, most likely. So whenever we put Death Touch on a large creature, it's really just for flavor. It's not for functionality. So you're kind of limited on what creatures you can do Death Touch. And the other thing is Death Touch and too much volume causes problems. So I'm glad it's keyworded. I like it. It's

flavorful. You know, it definitely gives like green and black some interesting tools that they can use. So, but I think that the limitations, the design limitations sort of keep it from getting any higher on the list.

So it comes in at number eight. Okay, number seven, Vigilance. So Vigilance first showed up on Serra Angel and Alpha, but it didn't actually get keyworded until Champions of Kamigawa. That's my guess, Champions of Kamigawa. There are a couple of the keywords

that we use them all the time, and eventually we're like, you know, we should just name this, and then some false set we just named it. I think Vigilance was... I might be off there. My memory is good, but not always great. So vigilance is neat in that a lot of our keywords essentially are

rule-breaking keywords. Like normally you can't do thing X, but now you can with this keyword. It's like I'm selling it on TV. And so, I mean, one of the things that's neat about vigilance is I like mechanics that basically are normally you do something, but this lets you break the rule because it's a really good teacher to teach the rule. Like one thing about vigilance is to understand vigilance, you have to understand tapping to attack. And I feel like one of the neat things about it is

that, you know, there are both... Vigilance does this neat thing that sort of allows things to be aggressive while still being defensive. One of the problems in general sometimes is if you're trying to be defensive, going on the offense opens up, makes you vulnerable. And so Vigilance kind of gives this nice tool to say, no, no, no, no. You can be, you can have some offense while still keeping your defense. And so I like how Vigilance does that. I also like how Vigilance definitely, like, there are certain things in the game that, like, it gets to be the counter to. Like, it's kind of neat when there's things that lock things down. But like, some of the Vigilance, like, well, I never tap in the first place so it's harder to lock me down and you know I mean obviously Sarah Angel is

you know I think as most things are I mean I guess keywords get introduced in one of two ways either somebody introduces it as a keyword or look it just gets made as a singular creature and then we realize oh this is a good we should do more of this. Like, for a long time, we just called this the Sarah ability, because it was the Sarah Angel did. But eventually, we keyworded it.

Vigilance is Strike against Vigilance. I think, gameplay-wise, it's good. It has a flavor problem, which is... Most of these mechanics, when I say death touch, it is death touch. Well, you're like, okay, I guess it touches things that it, you know, it gives death to things it touches. I'm like, you can

kind of figure out what death touch does. Or trample or indestructible. Those names are pretty evocative. Even if you don't know exactly how it works, at least you're getting the ballpark. Vigilance, we try to find a name for vigilance that sort of captured what it did, and there just wasn't one.

There just wasn't one that said, oh, I guess that doesn't have to attack. None of them conveyed that. And so vigilance, we thought, was flavorful and at least has some meaning to it, but it doesn't really do a good job as a mechanic that teaches you what it does. In fact, on the evergreen mechanics,

it's one of the weakest. Like, if I want to teach you vigilance, I've got to teach it to you. Like, okay, let me teach you what this thing is. Where other things, like normally when I teach somebody, I'm first teaching magic, I like to see if they can figure out what things do.

Because if they can figure it out, and if I'm not teaching it to them, they can just figure it out, it's a lot easier on them. Well, what do you think Death Touch does? They're like, well, it kills things, it touches. Like, yeah, okay, well, what would that mean? And vigilance, I don't think anyone's ever figured out vigilance.

This is not a thing you can figure out. So it makes things a little harder to learn. I like the mechanic, I like what it does, you know, but, you know, it's at number seven because a little bit dinged for not being as intuitive as some of the other mechanics. Okay. Number six. So this one, I, I clumped two mechanics together. First strike and double strike. Um, so the first strike, uh, showed up in alpha, obviously. Double strike, oh, double strike came about from the very first You Make the Card.

So, what's Mr. Babycake's real name? Forgotten, Forgotten, I've forgotten it. Forgotten Ancient? I think that's right. Forgotten Ancient, Forgotten. Okay, I might mess up the name of Babycake. If the play does name was Mr. Babycake, because I always remember Mr. Babycake. I never design names and never remember the final name. It's Forgotten Ancient, I think, Forgotten... Okay, people are yelling. Whenever I forget names, I know people are just listening, like, screaming at me what the actual word is, but Forgotten something. I think it's Forgotten Ancient.

But anyway, when we asked people to turn in mechanics for it, I wish I knew this person's name. Somebody turned in Double Strike, and it made no sense in green, which is what the card was, because Double Strike really is a First Strike variant. So we ended up putting in the colors the First Strike is. The First Strike's white and red, obviously. But, so First Strike is a very flavorful mechanic.

And it's a mechanic, it's, in some level, it's kind of an invasion mechanic. Really, on offense, a lot of times, it's just unblockable. It's like, you will die if you block me, and I will not die, so I guess I'll let you through. Sometimes in combinations, you know, there are some tricks you can do with it,

with giant growths and stuff. And double strikes, by the way. So double strike. The thing I loved about double strike was how somebody took an existing mechanic that we had and found a way to sort of add value to it in a way that, like, double strike is neat in that once I teach you first strike, I mean, I got a little more to teach you for double strike, but I feel like I've half taught you it. The Double Strike is kind of not a full mechanic.

It's like half a mechanic. And so, you know, we talk about how many every mechanics we can have. I love that sort of they work together and they build off a similar premise to each other. You know, First Strike is super flavorful. I think there is fun gameplay. The reason it's not higher is that it more causes, like, the threat of it more causes things than it actually doing things.

Like, one of the things about First Strike is usually no one blocks a First Strike creature unless they don't have a choice. Especially if you're not going to defeat the First Strike creature. I mean, you'll block it if you can kill it. So First Strike, to me, ended up at 6. And I like the gameplay. It's super flavorful. But it is...

I like mechanics that sort of... It kind of creates non-interaction. But that's not necessarily bad. I guess I just have to rank these. I find that First Strike sometimes we have to be careful what and where we put First Strike on. It can be very potent

especially on a high-powered creature. Once again, it tends to go on slightly lower-powered creatures. Unlike Death Touch, it means something on a bigger creature. A large creature with First Strike is really, really, really hard to get rid of um you know unlike death touch it means something on a bigger creature you know like a large creature with first strike it's really really really hard to get rid of because you know you need a multi-block to get rid of a large creature and if it's first strike i mean you have to block

so many things it's just it's almost impossible to stop um but anyway i like first strike i like the flavor and uh you know it it is another alpha mechanic that, like, you know, along the way, a lot of alpha mechanics have sort of fallen off, but this is one of the ones that, like, not only has stuck around, I continue, I expect it to stick around, so, you know, it's a strong mechanic. Number five, prowess. So prowess was introduced, and prowess is a mechanic, the one that says, whenever you cast a non-creature spell, it gets plus one, plus one to one to turn. So Prowse was made, well, was first put in the game during Contra Tarkir as the Jeskai mechanic.

The funny thing is we pieced it together, and then after the fact realized that we'd recreated a mechanic that John Laux had submitted during Great Designer Search 2. So the funny thing, by the way, is originally we had two versions of the mechanic. One that happened only with creatures and one that happened only without creatures. And the idea was we were going to put them on separate sides of the timeline, if you will. So we ended up doing the non-creature one here.

We didn't end up doing the creature version. But it played so well. One of the things we had been looking for was we really wanted to find a mechanic for blue that felt blue but had some relevance within combat. And blue is the color that has the most non-creatures. This shit let blue be kind of sneaky and do things in a very blue way. It's like, I have a creature. Maybe it's bigger. You don't know. I might have an inch in my hand, or I'm doing

other things that I normally want to do, and I do it before attacks, and my creature gets bigger, and now it's big enough that maybe you don't want to block it. Like, you know, I'm going to draw some cards, or maybe I'm going to summon something, and then, oh, look, my creature's bigger. Prowess is a very different evergreen mechanic. I mean, one of the reasons, we spent a long time trying to find the gaps. We wanted something that both, blue needed a creature combat mechanic, and blue-red needed an overlapping mechanic. And so, this, and those are the two spell colors. So the idea that they have a spell-related mechanic is pretty cool.

So Prowess, kind of like, there was a gaping hole that we spent years and years and years trying to find the the what to fill it with and prowess was that and prowess is it's just a neat mechanic it functions like i said it's it's an odd evergreen mechanic um and it's unlike most of the other evergreen mechanics but it it is super flavorful it has a lot of design space um i admit the flavor it like vigilance is not one of those things where I'm going to read it and exactly get what it does. I at least get that in combat it's better in combat, but why exactly?

I mean, probably the biggest strike against it is it's not super clear what it does. But it is clever, and it does neat things, and it does cool things at deck building. Um, so it is just a pretty cool and neat mechanic. And so I like how Prowess works. And Prowess makes me realize that at some point you're like, oh, haven't you found all the evergreen mechanics? And like, no, no.

You really can discover new things that you hadn't thought about before and find ways of doing things. So Prowess to me says, you know what? We will keep finding mechanics that can graduate to evergreen status. And that this is

a sign of things to come in my mind. Okay, number four, Menace. So Menace is you cannot be blocked by only one creature. Okay, so Menace was first introduced actually in red, interestingly enough. The mechanic is in black

and red. On Goblin Wardrums from Fallen Empires I think so Goblin Wardrums said basically it was an enchantment

that said none of your creatures can be black but only one creature it sort of granted all your team menace and one of the things is so for a long time

black black started in alpha it had I mean it wasn't alpha, it had... I mean, it wasn't keyword, but it had a mechanic, essentially, fear, which is I can only be blacked by black and artifact creatures. Like, I'm scary. Only black and artifact creatures would bother me.

And then we ended up turning fear into intimidate. Well, fear became a mechanic. And then fear turned into intimidate, which was so it could go in any color. It was like, I can't be blacked by my color in artifacts. But intimidate caused a lot of developmental problems. Eventually, we were looking for a different way to give black and red evasion. And the idea we really liked was

we wanted an evasion that, like, was useful, but one of the problems with fear and Intimidate were they were color-based. And so, like, you just have to be playing the wrong colors. Like, you know, if I have, you know, original Fear, I'm playing a black deck. What can I do? I can't stop it.

And so we wanted to find some sort of thing that, like, was some evasion, but there was an answer to it. Also, we liked the flavor that Fear and Intim played into which is hey i'm just you know part of the reason you want to block me i'm kind of scary um and so menace kind of met those two goals in that okay it represented like hey i'm not blocking you alone you know you're scary um but it also was something in which okay hey a lot of times menace is valuable because you only have one blocker or you know i have a big enough menace creature that you're creatures that can block, you know, the, you know, it's, you have to dedicate your team to stopping

and you don't want to do that, you know, and so menace is neat, but, hey, there are answers and menace, you know, it could be like I'm getting through with menace and, oh, you draw a creature, now, okay, now you have an answer to my menace. It did what we wanted to. It hit the flavor we needed to play, but it just has better gameplay. And so anyway, I think it's pretty cool. I like how Menace really, once again, it filled a place we needed.

So both Menace and Prowess, by the way, became evergreen in Magic Origins. We brought them to evergreen status. But I've been really happy with Menace. I think Menace actually, we were always looking for different evasion mechanics, and it is a pretty clean, flavorful, simple evasion mechanic. So I'm happy Menace exists. Hold on one second.

I have to... Sorry, safety first. I had to cut over and make sure that I was paying attention when I did that. Okay, next. Number three, lifelink. So lifelink, you gain life whenever you deal damage. So lifelink first showed up on a card called Spirit Link. Spirit Link's not exactly

Lifelink, obviously. So there's a card in Legends, it was an aura that granted, it's called Spirit Link, and it said, whenever an enchanted creature deals damage, you gain the life. The reason that's not

Lifelink completely is if I put Spirit Link on my opponent's creature, I got life whenever they did damage. So Spirit Link, for example, was an answer to creatures because if I put it on my opponent's creature, I got life whenever they did damage. So Spirit Link, for example, was an answer to creatures because if I put it on my opponent's creatures, essentially I've negated the damage

because every time they do damage to me, I gain life. And so it allowed you to have sort of offensive use. Life Link only goes on creatures is the creature keyword. So only if I grant Lifeink to my opponent's creature my opponent gains life not me gaining life so it's not strictly spirit link but spirit link was the spiritual successor

if you will to lifelink and one of the neat things about it is I like how it does neat things to math I mean it's kind of flavorful I will admit that lifelink it does neat things to math. I mean, it's kind of flavorful. I will admit that Lifelink makes a little more sense flavorfully in black than white. I mean,

white is king of life, and white is about life gain, and so strategically it makes a lot of sense. But black sort of has the flavor of like, I'm draining life out of you, which I think is a little more flavorful. The name also had the problem of kind of how we flavor white lifelink and how we flavor black lifelink

are completely different. And so we had to get a more generic name. So the good news is the name does kind of convey what it does. It's not 100% and it's not as clean a flavor as some of the other ones. But I feel like I really, really like the gameplay of Lifelink.

And I really like how it works. And one of the neat things is, in combat, is what we call the clock. Which is you figuring out how many turns... Like, one player usually has the advantage. You know, who's the beatdown. One player has the advantage. And then the defending player has to figure out, okay, they can do so much damage to me based on that amount of damage per turn.

How many turns do I have to find the answer to whatever the problem is? And one of the neat things about that is Lifelink plays with a clock in kind of a cool way, in that it says, okay, you know, I'm able to sort of gain some life back, so I'm, you know, it reduces how much damage they're doing and it changes the clock. And so anyway Lifelink to me, I mean you have to be careful with Lifelink. Lifelink's one of those things where

it can get pretty powerful pretty fast and you have to be careful how big the power is. I mean not that we don't make bigger Lifelinkers but we tend to do it in higher rarities but anyway Lifelink's my number three. I mean, not that we don't make bigger lifelinkers, but we tend to do it in higher rarities. But anyway, I... Lifelink's my number three. I think lifelink's pretty cool. Number two! Haste.

So, haste is you get to attack, the turn comes into play. Normally you can't do that. Haste first showed up in Alpha on a black card, actually. On... It popped out of your graveyard. Uh... I'm blanking on the name of it.

It was a black card that could pop out of your graveyard and attack right away at any. Very soon after, though, we started seeing haste show up on other creatures, and then it started becoming a red thing. We actually, for a while, our nickname in R&D was Solarity, which is a big word that means, basically, speed.

And eventually, we were like, you know what? We just use it so much, we should just give it a keyword. And then during FutureSight, I expanded it and I pushed it up to black. Normally it was just a red thing early on. Ironically, the first one ever was black, so pushing black sort of fell apropos. We do let green have it for constructed reasons, so it's tertiary and green. Development will use it a lot when they need to have green cards make them constructed worthy so it also shows up in green

haste is neat in that it is flavorful it is impactful and there are only two evergreen creature keywords that are what I call virtual virtual keywords which means when I talk about virtual vanilla, it means it's a card

that it's a card that at the end of the first turn, it essentially is a vanilla creature. And for all intents and purposes, haste essentially is a virtual vanilla, because after the first turn it really doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you can steal

it. I mean, there's a few cases where it does matter. But for most, most cases, essentially you have to carry only one turn and then you're done. You don't have to remember about it anymore. So it sort of does something impactful on the first turn, but then it just turns into a nice simple creature. Flash, by the way, is the other one which didn't make my top ten list. Didn't make the top ten because I believe that fundamentally in my heart

I wish it didn't have to be a creature keyword but I do like Flash it probably would be number 11 but didn't make the top 10

but Flash is the other virtual for those that are wondering was a virtual vanilla two keyword drawer anyway Haste is flavorful

fun good gameplay I mean really really good gameplay, and it does neat things, and it helps mess around with the clock, and like, I can attack, but oh, I didn't know you had a haste creature, and, you know, it does really cool things. The final one, number

one on my list, is, I mean, this should be no surprise to anybody, flying. Why is flying number one? Well, first and foremost, it is the most flavorful, easiest to understand mechanic we have that flying every time i teach flying i'm like it does this because you know it flies my the players oh of course oh it's a lot like they get it instantaneously um and it is just a really

really strong keyword um like if you said to me okay can you make a set and take away any one evergreen keyword like oh okay you know and any evergreen keyword? I'm like, oh, okay, you know. And any evergreen keyword I take away, there's some issues I'd have to deal with. But flying is the one where, like, I was told you have to take away flying. And you can't just replace it with essentially flying. You can't just put a horsemanship, which is secretly just flying. You know, could you make a set? I'm like, wow, I would have a hard time making a set without flying.

In fact, flying is so ubiquitous almost that when we talk about vanilla creatures, flying is almost like, you know, almost a vanilla creature by the way we function. You know, like most tokens we make, we tend not to put creature keywords on them, but the one exception is, well, you know, flying is okay. And a lot of times when we're making vanilla cycles,

sometimes one of them will just have flying. Like, well, you know, it is okay. And a lot of times when we're making, like, vanilla cycles, sometimes, like, one of them will just have flying. Like, well, you know, it's good enough, close enough. So vanilla, so it is super flavorful. It is easy to learn. It is really good gameplay. I mean, it is the king of evergreen keywords. It is just the, you know, the top notch of evergreen keywords. So clearly, clearly, it had to be my number one.

Real quickly, I'm going to wrap up here. Flash didn't make my top. So a few ones that didn't make the top ten. Flash, Strike Again's Flash was, in my heart of hearts, I kind of wish it wasn't a creature keyword. Hexproof causes a lot of problems. I do like hexproof, and where it works, it's kind of cool, but it just causes a lot of problems. I do like hexproof and where it works, it's kind of cool, but it just causes a lot of problems. And so it's, it's troublesome. Reach, reach really

exists as a keyword to make writing flying easier in reminder text. So it does a good thing. And my mind's just like, we probably could write it out. Like, you know, it doesn't really need to be evergreen keyword. I mean, it does it allows us to very quickly and succinctly write flavor text for flying, or reminder text for flying, which is important. So, we're just doing good work, but, eh, not my top ten. And then Defender.

It's the only evergreen keyword that's a negative. Not that I don't dislike Defender or anything. I just, I'm not, didn't make my top ten it's a negative keyword so but anyway those were my top 10 one more time number 10 indestructible number 9 trample number 8 death touch number 7 vigilance

number 6 first strike and double strike number 5 prowess number 4 menace number 3 lifelink number 2 haste and number 1 flying and that my friends is my top ten evergreen mechanics. Creature keywords. So anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed this today.

I like doing my top tens. It's fun kind of looking at the bare basics of the game, so this was a fun one today. Anyway, I hope you guys enjoyed it, but I'm in my parking space, so we don't know what that means. Instead of talking magic, it's time for me to make magic. I'll see you guys soon. Bye-bye.